On the way down the stairs, she saw him out on the patio, in his chair, with his coffee cup, staring at his pool. Shoulders wide, bared and tan. Dark hair still messy from sleep.
Her heart slid right up into her throat.
She swallowed it down, set her coffee mug on the island, and went to the library.
One last bit.
She got what she went there to get, stacked it at the back of the pile she had, and held them all to her chest.
She did not stop again to take more breaths.
She had to do this and do it now, or she wouldn’t.
So she moved quickly, directly back to the great room, to the doors to the back deck.
The second she opened the door, Stellan twisted in his seat to look at her, and her heart started pounding, her throat closing tight.
He was just so beautiful.
So, so beautiful.
She closed the door behind her and moved toward him, seeing his gaze had dropped to what she was holding against her chest, and his handsome face had changed.
It had frozen.
But his body hadn’t.
He got up and moved free of the chair to stand at its side in his burgundy drawstring pants from the night before. His glorious, powerful chest was bare. The waistband of the pants was hanging so low on his hips they were hanging almost negligently, the weight of the drawstring dipping to the point the curves of muscles that formed a V to highlight his pubis were exposed, and the very top of his dark pubic hair peeked over.
Like that, in all his considerable glory, he watched her make her way to him, making that journey the most painful one she’d ever made.
“Darling—” he whispered when she stopped close.
“Don’t,” she whispered back.
His eyes were burning, and she couldn’t stand the heat.
So she pushed the sketchbooks away from her and into his chest.
Instantly, his arms rose and wrapped around them.
Carefully.
Lovingly.
God.
She started trembling as she stared up into beautiful blue eyes that had gone bright with unshed wet.
He didn’t know.
He had no idea.
This was touching him deeply.
But Christ, knowing what she knew, what he’d soon find out, it was killing her.
“Come find me when you’re done,” she said softly. “I want a chance to explain.”
It was guttural when he started, “Simone—”
“You might hate me when you have it all.”
“I’ll never hate you,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “Don’t say that now. You can’t say that now.” She dipped her chin to indicate the books. “I can’t be around when you read them. But I’ll be waiting.”
With that, as fast as she could, she turned on her foot and left him.
It would take him a long time, she knew. There were twelve of them, pages sized eighteen-by-twenty-four, seventy sheets.
A lot of life.
A lot of hideousness.
So much ugly.
Now in Stellan’s hands.
Even so, she had to prepare so she didn’t chicken out during phase two of losing Stellan forever, but before what she gave him made him let her go, she’d help him to understand fully why he needed to so he could be free.
Therefore, she went back up to the bedroom and got her LV cruiser bag.
She took it down to the library, set it on the big, round, frost-blue upholstered ottoman with its carved wood base that was at the center of the four, buttery-caramel-leather, nailhead-framed chairs. Stately. Classy. Inviting.
Stellan.
She left the room. Back in the kitchen, she warmed up her coffee, grabbed her laptop and phone, and headed back, not once looking at Stellan out on the deck.
She settled into a chair and opened up her laptop, logging in, beginning to do some digging on Josh Coates, owner of one-third of the Bolt.
She didn’t get very far.
Instead, her mind wandered, and she looked around the room, taking in the interesting ironwork around the cream sheets of glass on the chandelier. The rich, wood, inset shelving with their sconces in between with single, tapered candles in them. The built-in architect’s lamps over each set of shelves. The window seat in the wood-framed bay with its thick toss pillows.
The room was big, but it seemed cozy, welcoming, like the rest of the house. It could so easily be overwhelming, austere, intimidating. But it wasn’t.
Like Stellan.
At a glance, he was so visibly physically superior, he was daunting.
But the deeper you got inside, the warmth enveloped you, permeating you, drawing you further in, showing you the way home.
She forced her mind back to Coates and kept it there long enough she had to go get herself another cup of coffee. She did and again did not look at Stellan before she headed back to the library.
Sixx had totally given up on Coates, as well as starting to dig into Barclay Richardson and Pete Beardsley, his two partners, her mug was empty, her eyes were aimed and staring vacantly out the window, but even lost to the nothingness she’d forced in her head in order to deal with what was to come, she still sensed his approach.
Therefore she was turned in her chair, but braced, and looking at the door when he came through it.
She couldn’t read his expression, but she noted he didn’t have the sketchbooks.
“Please don’t say anything,” she begged quietly.
He stopped just inside the door, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it before walking to the chair beside hers, sitting, and turning her way.
She took him in, seeing his attention was focused entirely on her, but that was all she got from him.
So very Stellan.
When it happened, it would be quick and clean and as painless as he could make it.
Before then, for him, so he could have it all, she had to get through phase two.
She took a deep breath and turned to the cruiser bag, pulling it off the ottoman and placing it on the floor by her feet.
She opened it, reached in, and found the first of the three things in there she wanted to show him.
She pulled it out and held it up for him.
It was a cheap, plastic, small, tatty, stained baby doll.
“Dad gave me this,” she said, staring at it, remembering it wasn’t in much better condition years ago when her father had given it to her. “I loved it when he first gave it to me. It was the first toy I ever got. The only toy I ever had.”
Her voice faded away as the memories returned, but she put effort into pulling herself back to the present, not getting sucked into and therefore lost to the past.
This effort was easy.
She’d had plenty of practice.
“I played with it all the time.” She turned her gaze to Stellan. “Until Mom was in a bad mood one day when I was playing with it, so she told me Dad had taken it right out of the hands of a little girl whose father owed them money.” She drew in breath, letting it out saying, “I didn’t play with it after that.”
Stellan said nothing, his face was still expressionless, but his gaze never left her.
“I was six,” she whispered, and she watched his tall, lean body jerk.
And there it was.
Stellan never missed anything.
“I had to … I had to…” Sixx swallowed. “I had to create her so she’d protect me. It didn’t start that night they died. I’d been Sixx half my life by then.”
“May I talk?” he requested quietly.
“Can I finish first?” she asked back.
Slowly, he nodded.
Sixx set the doll on the ottoman and reached into the bag.
She pulled out a cheap, stuffed crocodile.
Staring at it, she shared, “My uncle won this for me. At the State Fair. He took me and my friends. The ones he killed. He won it for me before he won ones for them. I knew why, even then. I knew. It made it seem normal, the sweet, handsome, kind uncle taking his niece and her friends to the State Fair, throwing balls into holes to get his niece a stuffed crocodile. Then going the extra mile so they didn’t feel left out and winning ones for them too.”